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Authors: Iain Sinclair
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in Stamford would be ideal. The ones she marks up in the property pages look like variants of the original Hadman home, the Red House, nice proportions,
local stone or brick, Virginia creeper optional. This is desire on a molecular level, an instinct she has allowed to lie in abeyance. Her thirty-six-year captivity in low-lying Hackney, with occasional excursions to the seaside (my ideal), has been stoically endured, if not yet accepted: fate. My guilt at putting her through this exile is tempered by seeing, today, what Lesser Peterborough actually is: ribbon estates, self-regarding display, disputes with the vicar on points of doctrine (happy-clappy, lord-of-the-dance against hoary standards bellowed out by a diminishing congregation of Agatha Christie stereotypes).
Where did the Hadman house get its name? From the bricks, obviously, rosy and warm. I think we can discount William Morris and his National Trust stopover in Bexleyheath, too suburban. Too arty-crafty socialist. But I can't help thinking of A. A. Milne's one and only detective novel, published in 1922, The Red House Mystery . Julian Symons placed this bonbon in the tradition of Ronald Knox, an amusing yarn in which ‘the amateur investigator gets everything wrong’. The dead stage their own disappearances. Raymond Chandler had no truck with Milne's gentility, theflaws in his plotting. The detective's sidekick from The Red House Mystery is given clear warning of his place in the scheme of things, the required level of masochism. He knows what he's signing on for: a narrative with good manners – followed by the temporary immortality of instant reprints and cheap paperbacks with gaudy covers.
The problem for our pedestrian trio (one of the problems) is that there are no sidekicks: or, we're all sidekicks but we won't admit it. Petit, drifting off the pace, hoovering up representations of the empty road, a second Nene, is jogging over the pedestrian bridge as I find (and photograph) a pair of oversized, handpainted roosters with fire-engine cockscombs: symbols of the new Glinton. Renchi's photographs are more like film, in terms of their narrative, than Petit's consoling video-meditations on distance: clouds, soft-focus traffic (moving through, moving on). Flip the pages of Renchi's album and the story of the walk flickers into life: my rear-view baldness, peeling ear-rims (disconcertingly like my father, returned and on the lurch). You can see the white shirt, the scarlet rucksack, the camera in my hand; Anna approaching. Broad grin. Grey top. White sunhat. She might be a villager, trowel at the ready, weeding the grave. Four o'clock. At Glinton. Just as I said.
AV TITMAN, FAMILY BUTCHER.
Anna is alongside the butcher's shop, this butcher of families, when we coincide, manoeuvre, embrace. The others, following discreetly behind, embrace her too. Grateful to come out of my fiction, always unpredictable, and back into something real and earthed and ticking in sunlight: the car.
From the boot, I fetch out sandals, a fresh shirt. And then we return to St Benedict's (church locked, stone effigies in the porch, man and woman, fabulously weathered), and to the Hadman family grave. This is prominently positioned, at the south-east corner, close to the gravel path. The lettering is fresh and black (restored in 1995, when Anna's mother died). Clare's inscription might havefaded – NOT MAD – while the gravestones of his wife and children, in Northborough, need to be traced by finger like Braille, but this part of the Hadman story is fresher than newsprint.
TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM HADMAN CHURCHWARDEN OF GLINTON CHURCH 1921–1943 WHO DIED JULY 28th 1943 AGED 70 YEARS ALSO OF FLORENCE HIS BELOVED WIFE WHO DIED FEB. 4TH 1944 AGED 71 YEARS. “ HOME ART GONE AND TA EN THY WAGES ”
Anna's grandfather. A farmer. Occupier of the Red House. Founder of the dynasty. That's as far back as we can go. Old William died a month after Anna was born. To be tagged with a
local stone or brick, Virginia creeper optional. This is desire on a molecular level, an instinct she has allowed to lie in abeyance. Her thirty-six-year captivity in low-lying Hackney, with occasional excursions to the seaside (my ideal), has been stoically endured, if not yet accepted: fate. My guilt at putting her through this exile is tempered by seeing, today, what Lesser Peterborough actually is: ribbon estates, self-regarding display, disputes with the vicar on points of doctrine (happy-clappy, lord-of-the-dance against hoary standards bellowed out by a diminishing congregation of Agatha Christie stereotypes).
Where did the Hadman house get its name? From the bricks, obviously, rosy and warm. I think we can discount William Morris and his National Trust stopover in Bexleyheath, too suburban. Too arty-crafty socialist. But I can't help thinking of A. A. Milne's one and only detective novel, published in 1922, The Red House Mystery . Julian Symons placed this bonbon in the tradition of Ronald Knox, an amusing yarn in which ‘the amateur investigator gets everything wrong’. The dead stage their own disappearances. Raymond Chandler had no truck with Milne's gentility, theflaws in his plotting. The detective's sidekick from The Red House Mystery is given clear warning of his place in the scheme of things, the required level of masochism. He knows what he's signing on for: a narrative with good manners – followed by the temporary immortality of instant reprints and cheap paperbacks with gaudy covers.
The problem for our pedestrian trio (one of the problems) is that there are no sidekicks: or, we're all sidekicks but we won't admit it. Petit, drifting off the pace, hoovering up representations of the empty road, a second Nene, is jogging over the pedestrian bridge as I find (and photograph) a pair of oversized, handpainted roosters with fire-engine cockscombs: symbols of the new Glinton. Renchi's photographs are more like film, in terms of their narrative, than Petit's consoling video-meditations on distance: clouds, soft-focus traffic (moving through, moving on). Flip the pages of Renchi's album and the story of the walk flickers into life: my rear-view baldness, peeling ear-rims (disconcertingly like my father, returned and on the lurch). You can see the white shirt, the scarlet rucksack, the camera in my hand; Anna approaching. Broad grin. Grey top. White sunhat. She might be a villager, trowel at the ready, weeding the grave. Four o'clock. At Glinton. Just as I said.
AV TITMAN, FAMILY BUTCHER.
Anna is alongside the butcher's shop, this butcher of families, when we coincide, manoeuvre, embrace. The others, following discreetly behind, embrace her too. Grateful to come out of my fiction, always unpredictable, and back into something real and earthed and ticking in sunlight: the car.
From the boot, I fetch out sandals, a fresh shirt. And then we return to St Benedict's (church locked, stone effigies in the porch, man and woman, fabulously weathered), and to the Hadman family grave. This is prominently positioned, at the south-east corner, close to the gravel path. The lettering is fresh and black (restored in 1995, when Anna's mother died). Clare's inscription might havefaded – NOT MAD – while the gravestones of his wife and children, in Northborough, need to be traced by finger like Braille, but this part of the Hadman story is fresher than newsprint.
TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM HADMAN CHURCHWARDEN OF GLINTON CHURCH 1921–1943 WHO DIED JULY 28th 1943 AGED 70 YEARS ALSO OF FLORENCE HIS BELOVED WIFE WHO DIED FEB. 4TH 1944 AGED 71 YEARS. “ HOME ART GONE AND TA EN THY WAGES ”
Anna's grandfather. A farmer. Occupier of the Red House. Founder of the dynasty. That's as far back as we can go. Old William died a month after Anna was born. To be tagged with a
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